Coldbrook(125)

‘Don’t you dare leave us,’ Lucy said.

Vic pointed at the bus. Chaney revved his bike and his rear wheel screeched as he powered back across the square, kicking up clods of turf from the green, heading for the police station.

‘Keep the rifle,’ he said.

‘Vic—’

‘Daddy—’

‘Don’t you dare leave us!’

‘Lucy, there are kids in there,’ Vic said, and in his soft voice they all heard the truth. With everything he had done wrong, leaving them behind would be one step too far.

‘You said you’d never leave me again,’ Lucy said.

‘He won’t,’ Jayne said. ‘He’ll be back. You’ve seen his shooting.’

Vic kissed Lucy and Olivia. ‘You need to go on,’ he said. ‘Get Jayne down to Coldbrook and inside. Straight down the air vent, and Holly will be waiting.’

‘I could come,’ Marc said, and he meant it. But he also nodded when Vic refused, acknowledging how important he had become.

Vic climbed over Jayne and slipped from the car, his M1911 in one hand, Sean’s pistol in the other. For a second as the car powered away he locked glances with Lucy through the back window. Then he ran for the bus.

The sound of the other vehicles’ engines faded, and the hooting of the zombies was appalling now.

‘Well, come on!’ Chaney shouted. He and two of his gang had reached the bus, and while Chaney fired a pistol at the advancing zombies – shotgun swinging empty from his other hand, ready to club anything that came too close – the other two men were struggling with the bus’s door. The kids inside were screaming. The three remaining adults were shooting from smashed windows.

As Vic sidestepped a running dead child, wondering what he had done, praying that he would see his family again, a woman on the bus turned her gun towards him.

‘No!’ he shouted, but she fired anyway. He ducked down, waiting for the pain. It didn’t come. Someone hit the ground behind him.

‘Squatting for a shit?’ Chaney shouted, and he actually laughed as he came to help Vic up. His hand was huge and sweaty.

‘Not sure what I’m doing.’

The other two bikers had prised the bus door open, and Vic and Chaney followed them on board. One of them grabbed the dead driver and pulled him aside, a wet mess. Kids screamed and the adults shouted louder to try and calm them. The bikers seemed not to notice.

‘Stray bullet,’ one of them said.

‘Fuck that,’ the other drawled. ‘Stray bullets, plural. Steering column’s wasted.’

‘This bus is f*cked?’ the first biker asked.

‘This bus is f*cked.’

‘And here come the cops,’ Chaney commented, kicking the doors closed.

Vic saw who Chaney had been referring to. Sheriff Blanks and two other cops – ex-cops now, he supposed – had emerged from the station’s smashed front door and were coming down the steps. The pretty officer who’d once let Vic off a parking ticket had what looked like a fence post embedded in her abdomen.

As the adults quietened the kids, that dreadful, gentle hooting came in to fill the silence. From the several streets that met on the square, and many of the buildings around them, the dead of Danton Rock converged.

‘Dinner is served,’ Chaney said. And he started reloading the Remington.





12


‘He’ll be fine,’ Jayne said. She spoke through a haze of pain and the threat of unconsciousness, the simple act of talking sending vibrations into her chest that set her bones on fire and shivers along her limbs that seemed to crush her hands.

‘You can’t say that,’ Lucy said as if she was disgusted.

‘She can, Mommy. She knows.’ Olivia had sat up as soon as her father had left and was staring from the back window, even as they left the town uphill behind them.

‘She can’t,’ Lucy said, softer this time. ‘It’s just something that people say.’

Jayne gave the woman and her kid a smile, even though to smile hurt her cheeks. It was worse. Much worse. The churu had never been this bad.

Lucy was staring at her daughter and Jayne wondered what they’d been through already. There were billions of stories of pain and anguish on the planet today, but fewer every second. Zombies didn’t have stories – no past, no future. They were as far from human as you could get.

‘He’s a brave guy,’ Jayne said. The wind was roaring through the smashed windscreen, and now and then she thought she could hear those hooting calls.

‘I’m not sure what brave is,’ Lucy said. ‘He’s got guilt. He loves his family. And sometimes he loves someone else.’

Jayne opened her eyes a little wider and thought, Holly. She’d heard the way Vic had spoken to her over the phone, seen Lucy’s reaction, but back then she hadn’t put two and two together.

The little girl didn’t know anything about all that. Her Daddy had gone to help the kids, and Jayne had told her that he’d be back. That seemed to be enough for her, but there was no saying what she was thinking on the inside. Never was with kids.

‘Well . . .’ Jayne said, not knowing how to respond. She shifted and bit her lip, breathing heavily against the churu coma that she felt rising. They need me on my feet. They need me able to—